The lead author on a study that recommended a firmware update to help …

You'd think a study outlining how a simple console firmware update could save terawatts of electricity and billions of dollars in energy costs wouldn't be incredibly controversial. But judging by the comments on our recent story about that study, many readers had a few issues with both the authors' findings and their policy suggestions.

How they got to "30 percent" waste

One of the biggest criticisms of the study had to do with the core assumption that a full 30 percent of console owners are actually leaving their systems on 24/7, rather than simply hitting the off button when they're done playing. This data point is key to the study's claim that idle game consoles are sucking up roughly one percent of America's annual household electricity consumption, though regression analysis shows that the energy being wasted is still significant even with smaller ratios of irresponsible console owners.

While lead author Eric Hittinger confirmed to Ars Technica that he had no formal data to back up the 30 percent "always on" rate, he said he didn't just pull the number of thin air, either. Instead, he based the assumption on an informal survey of his friends (mainly through spying on their online status through Xbox Live and PSN) and from informal talks with family members, acquaintances, and extended social networks about their console use habits.

"Originally my assumption was that the numbers would be much lower—I originally assumed about 10 percent of people [would leave their systems on]," Hittinger said. But he said his informal survey found that "normal people" tended to pay much less attention to their energy consumption habits than the "techies" he was close with, and that people who aren't obsessed with technology are much more likely to simply leave their systems on all day. He also said that he increased the assumed waste rate a little bit to account for console owners that occasionally leave their systems on when they have to run out the door quickly, for example.

Hittinger said he realizes these kind of informal assumptions aren't ideal for a scientific paper, but said that his team is currently working on crafting a survey to get a more accurate handle on just how much time the average console owner leaves his or her system idling. In any case, he re-emphasized that a default auto-power-down feature would end up saving energy even if as few as seven percent of console owners are failing to turn their systems off regularly.

Energy Star standards for game consoles

In any case, the EPA is planning to weigh in on the issue of console energy waste by developing new Energy Star standards for video game systems for the first time. While compliance with these standards would be completely voluntary, consumers pay close attention to Energy Star ratings for appliances, and console makers will likely want the organization's seal of approval for their systems once it's available.

Energy Star's video game console standards, which are still being drafted by the EPA, will likely take into account integrated features like auto-power-down. But the organization may also set standards for how much power an Energy Star-approved console should draw when actively playing a game or video, which might compel console makers to scale back their systems' processing power a bit. Hittinger said one of the points of his paper was to show agencies like the EPA that such compromises on console power aren't really necessary to get significant energy savings.

"We wrote this paper partly to come down on the side of the console manufacturers," he said. "As we mention in the paper, you can save almost all of the energy just from the auto-power-down. So if you make that the only requirement, or at least loosen up the other requirements, it makes it a lot easier for console manufacturers to deliver the highest performing machines possible, which is what we prefer and most consumers prefer."

Improving the defaults

Since the data for the study was first collected in 2010, Hittinger says he's been heartened to see that both Microsoft and Sony have configured their newly sold systems to power down after extended inactivity by default. This is important, he said, because studies have shown that the vast majority of users simply don't alter the default power-saving settings for their various electronic devices. But Hittinger says he's still concerned about the roughly 75 million current-generation consoles released before this change was made, and says that pushing out a firmware update to turn on the feature would be a simple, effective way to gain a lot of collective power savings.

And Hittinger says console makers should be looking to the future too, by planning to implement a more robust sleep or hibernation function into the next generation of systems. That way, the hardware could save an image of the current game state before before going into an automatic power-saving mode, just like most modern PCs do. It's probably too late to easily add this kind of progress-saving feature to current game consoles, but if it's integrated into the next generation from the start, then the prospect of the energy-sucking, idle game console may become a thing of the past.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area.